DeltaCharlie

This thread is a little delayed as we have only just got our internet restored following the Newcastle Storms in April (yay for the speediness of Telstra!). On Wednesday 6th May 2015 we welcomed this long-awaited bundle of fluff into our lives. I have had my eye on this breed for many years now but the logistics of importing from the UK put them well out of reach. When I heard that a friend of ours had imported a few into NZ I thought to myself, "I might be in with a shot one day", but given the average litter size is 1-2 pups I put it to the back of my mind. Then Posh went and threw 6 puppies :laugh: They were a day old when the breeder messaged me and asked if I was interested in one. I mentioned it to Tailwag and within 5 mins we had decided, by that afternoon he had a name LOL I will include a link to the breed standard although it really doesn't do them justice. We had absolutely no idea what we were in for! Hype is a little firecracker, very wary of strangers and from 8 weeks of age has flat out refused attention of any sort that isn't on his terms. He is so different to the border collies and terriers who, as puppies, are just passed around to meet anyone and everyone. Hype wants nothing to do with anybody who isn't his friend and the more someone tries to become a friend the more he despises them. The best tactic seems to be to completely ignore him and go about your business. Then he can approach at his own pace and when he is ready. If you have yummy treats then you will enter the good books (until the yummy treats run out). The first 2 weekends were spent at agility trials where everyone, understandably, wanted to meet him and cuddle him. I learnt very quickly to tuck him under and run away as people would rush up to him and try and scruff his face, expecting that all puppies love attention. His litter brother was at the same trials so they spent the weekends together in a puppy pen where they could see people from a distance and play to their hearts content. I was really impressed with the number of people who went away and researched the breed after the first weekend, and were much better prepared for interactions with him the second weekend. They are used to seeing him now and everyone just ignores him, much to his delight! He is old enough to be on the ground which helps as he can choose the pace of the interactions. He loves food and tugging and will happily perform tricks for anyone with food. His only condition is that you do not attempt to pat him in any way (although he is becoming more accepting of that too). The initial plan was to get him into the show ring but he is a long way off being ready for that. His confidence has improved greatly with people but he still is not ready for strangers to be approaching him and running their hands over him, let alone looking at his mouth etc. We haven't ruled it out for the future but he will need a lot more practise before that can happen. I don't see the point in setting him up for a negative experience when he has come so far already. He is an absolute clown of a dog and has just fitted into our lifestyle so easily. I would have a whole house full of these dogs, they are such characters and he has us in stitches constantly. As Tailwag says, he lives in a world of unicorns and rainbows. Life is just one big party and meant to be enjoyed! The other dogs are incredibly tolerant of his stupidity because, although very full on, he is not in their face like the BC puppies. If someone doesn't want to play, he just wanders off to play with something else. When he does play, it is very loud with lots of barking and growling and pretty full on. The terriers enjoy his style of play (although at 14 and 16 they rarely feel like playing with him) and some of the border collies have adapted well, the others just ignore him. Meeting strange dogs is the same, they either realise he is playing or think he wants a piece of them and move away. In saying that though, they are definitely not the breed for everyone. Hype has met a few people who have wanted the breed for themselves, only to have them turn around after 5mins and say that perhaps they are not the sort of breed they would like after all. They are incredibly headstrong and do not like it when things are not going their way, so it is important that their owner is a strong leader. Hype throws the biggest tantrums I have ever seen in a puppy and they can go on for half an hour! They are into everything and can bounce ridiculously high. Given half a chance I suspect that he would bounce onto the kitchen counter from a stop start and he is only 17 weeks old. Constant Positive Socialisation is a must with these dogs. They are bred to be wary and guard against threats, they will not hesitate to use their teeth if they feel it is warranted (but will bark and carry on first to give plenty of warning). Most of them do not want to meet friends, they have their people and that is all they need. They shouldn't be aggressive, they should just ignore everyone around them. Now for the important part- the photos!!! The first cuddle with Tailwag. He was so traumatised by the flight and a mixup at the airport that had them badly delayed at customs it took us 20mins to entice him out of the crate once we got home. Once out though, he just melted into our arms. Playing in the yard the next day The brothers relaxing at their first agility trial. Wookiee getting a belly rub and Hype passed out on a friend's lap. 8-9 weeks of age

There is a process you go through to get ANKC recognition. I don't know the ins and outs of it but I think it is outlined on the website. As far as I know it is fairly straight-forward as long as the breed has KC registration elsewhere in the world and a standard to use as a template (or to simply adopt).

Brooks is 4.5kg and she has always had a full chew :)

I will be following this post as we will be looking to do the same thing in about 3-5 years, it's just a shame they are not the same breed. We have recently imported a Berger de Pyrenees (pyrenean shepherd) but we were lucky enough to source one from NZ (the first litter born in the southern hemisphere). He is on a non-breeding contract but we saw it as a great chance to get to know the breed and know for sure if we want to go ahead with importing from the UK in the future. Luckily for us, a stud dog has just been imported from the US so AI will not necessarily be needed. We were also lucky that there was 1 bitch here a few years ago (not anymore) so the breed had already been given ANKC registration, I'm guessing you would have to do all of that too?

I've raised a few puppies on a prey model diet and never experienced inconsistent stools. I'd be changing the meat source and going from there. I was never one for easing into things, my pups went onto red meat right from the start. While I no longer feed a prey model diet (would love to as my dogs thrived on it, but it is just not feasible cost-wise with 13 dogs) I still feed a raw diet. Our 17week old pyrenean shepherd has lamb brisket, chicken frames, roo meat and fish carcasses. Once he has a full set of adult teeth he will have roo tails and turkey wings too. Roo will remain his primary meat source though when not served on a bone.

The rules will be made public in a few weeks anyway. Why can't people just wait for them to come out and stop all this speculation?! There is nothing that can be done to change them now anyway so I wish people would stop harping on about it!

Those places usually hold the puppy classes in an area not usually accessible to the public. As opposed to a vet clinic, where people actually take their sick animals...

Not sure if there is something she really highly values (walk etc) but with Cody I did a session similar to what you have done and then straight away jumped to "every time you leave the house the muzzle is on". Whether he needed it or not it went on for every walk and every training session away from home. It took him hardly any time at all to connect muzzle with fun things are going to happen.

Gus eats it like grass! That'd be right...I'll pass him the memo! If it hasn't affected him by now then I would say its not going to :) All living things have a seizure threshold. Go below that and they have a seizure. Genetics plays a big part in determining that seizure threshold. If you have a high threshold for seizures then you can probably do what you like and never have an issue. If you have a low threshold for seizures, however, you want to be avoiding anything that could possibly bring you too low. Rosemary is one of those things.

What would you recommend ? Are you able to add some bones to the diet?

Toe Grips There is an Aus supplier that we get ours from. Would have to check with Tailwag who it is though as she uses them for her older dogs.

Definitely a big No, No, No to Rosemary! It is a neurotoxin (along with oregano and thyme) and can cause seizures in dogs. Having a dog with really bad seizures (she has never eaten rosemary btw), it boggles the mind to think items could actually be added to dog food that could cause them.

Have you considered toe grips? They are supposed to be great.

Would never use it on any of ours, that is a lot to put into their system in one hit and too many horror stories. One of our older dogs had a very bad reaction to it (she is 2.5kg). It contains ivermectin so definitely something we avoid with the border collies. We use interceptor every 3 months. Can be bought pretty cheap online.

We have a rule in our house- no border collie teeth on the little dogs, no matter how much of a turd they are being! Leave them to us to deal with.

With a great deal of difficulty! We have only had a couple of major scraps but they are not easy and you have to rely on voice more than anything to get those on the fringe to get out of it while grabbing the instigators. Much easier when you know the pack inside out and can instantly pick the instigator. With unknown dogs in a day care setting I wouldn't even know where to start. We were packing up at the end of the agility grand prix last year when 2 of our bitches decided to simultaneously grab a third. It had been a long 4 days of competition for them and everyone was tired and crabby. I was holding about 7 or 8 leads at the time, we had 11 dogs with us in total. My only option was to drop the leads and hope that the others didn't get involved. I grabbed 2 girls, someone grabbed the other and we had 8 other dogs running loose (or trying to hide from the commotion). If they had all decided to get involved it would have taken many hands to break them up. Thankfully most of ours prefer to flee from trouble!

Most professionals I know shudder at the idea of "doggie day care". A bunch of dogs of varying sizes and temperaments running around under the "supervision" of someone with minimal dog knowledge is an accident waiting to happen. And sadly, they do. Exactly We don't even let our pack run together all at the same time because accidents can happen when large numbers of dogs are running together. If the border collies are free running they are in groups of no more than 4 and the little dogs are well and truly put away so they do not get run over and trampled. I would never allow mine to free run with that many dogs, it scares me enough the number of agility/flyball clubs that free run all the dogs together at the end of training. So much that could go wrong in a split second.

The clinical notes from autopsy (autopsy itself is noted as too distressing to share). I personally cannot comprehend the decision to put a small, older dog (who also happened to be DEAF!) in with all those large boisterous dogs. Even if they were all temp tested etc, the risk of injury purely from dogs being dogs would be enough to make me think twice about the combinations I saw. What if the small dog was swimming in the dam and a larger dog jumped in on top of it? Or knocked it over while running and playing? A deaf dog would not even hear them approaching in time to get out of the way. If a situation was arising between a few dogs, the poor thing would not have heard any growling etc either. Such a terrible tragedy that is made worse by the fact that it could have been avoided with a little common sense on the part of the "professionals". Joe Public cannot always be relied on to know what is best for their dog, that is why they place their trust in the professionals.

Apart from the advice that everybody else has given you, the biggest one I can give you is do not make comparisons between them. They are their own individuals and need to be treated as such. They will learn things at different rates, need help with different aspects of life, and they will enjoy different things. The biggest mistake we made with littermates was to make comparisons (although at least yours are different breeds and sexes, which will help). Just because one can make it through the night without needing to toilet doesn't mean the other will (and on that note just because one can hold on all night doesn't mean they can if you are up toileting the other LOL). Just because one has learnt to use the dog door doesn't mean the other doesn't need assistance. One might learn to sit and wait for dinner while the other one has no comprehension yet of what you are asking. It became more obvious with us once we started training them for agility. One learnt tricks by doing (and hoping they got it right) while the other learnt by painstakingly thinking it through until she knew exactly what behaviour she wanted to offer. One sister hit the ring at 18 months and the other wasn't ready until a few months past her 2nd birthday (and even then was thrown in as a "lets see what she can do"). We had originally had grand plans of debuting them together, which didn't even come close to happening LOL. Although at least by then we had stopped expecting them to learn things at the same rate and be ready for things at the same time.

Tailwag took Link (who is now 7) to the one at Narrabundah and was mortified at what went on. Bigger pups kept hassling her and knocking her to the ground no matter how much she submitted and when it was questioned she was told by the trainers that it is ok, they are puppies and will work it out in the end. Like I said though, it may have changed now, that was 7 years ago and the Canberra region has come a long way in its understanding of dog behaviour in that time.

Be careful with the ones run by dog clubs, they tend to be free-for-alls with dogs of all sizes thrown in together. Or at least they used to be (i am from Canberra). Perhaps go along to one first to see if you feel comfortable with their style? It's a shame the animal medical centre isn't running them anymore, Sandra is awesome :)

Perhaps a perceived stigma with greys? I admit I had a very different opinion of them before I became a dog owner in my 20s and started to interact with different breeds. Maybe a cross is easier to market? Who knows. I know plenty of people who have got a border collie cross because they didn't think they could handle a purebred!

I thought it was so that the dogs were not subject to muzzling laws being "crosses". Could be wrong though. No that is a tactic used by the dodgy rehoming groups and is actually illegal. Almost all racing greys will have at least one ear tatt, crosses do not, most greys in the pound and RSPCA are surrendered by trainers with paperwork. No idea then. I assumed that they mustnt have had tatts and therefore could pass as a cross. Seems to be plenty of breeds listed as crosses by them that clearly look pure to me. Do crossbreeds rehome easier? No idea, just thinking out loud now :)

I thought it was so that the dogs were not subject to muzzling laws being "crosses". Could be wrong though.

Fuze is 11.5, Link is 12.5, Shock is 13 something, the other girls are all 14 something. The boys are 14.8 and 17.